Staff

Najam Haider

Director, Middle East Institute
nhaider@barnard.edu

Najam Haider, a Professor in the Department of Religion, completed his PhD at Princeton University (2007), M.Phil. at Oxford University (2000), and BA at Dartmouth College (1997). His courses bridge the gap between the classical and modern Muslim worlds with a particular emphasis on the impact of colonization and modernity on Islamic political and religious discourse. Prof. Haider’s research interests include early Islamic history, the methodology and development of Islamic law, and Shi‘ism. His first book entitled The Origins of the Shi‘a was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011 and focused on the role of ritual and sacred space in the formation of Shī‘ī identity. His second book (Shī‘ī Islam – Cambridge 2014) offered a comprehensive overview of three branches of Shī‘ī Islam – Zaydī, Twelver, and Ismā‘īlī – through a framework of theology and memory. His most recent book (The Rebel and the Imam in Early Islam - Cambridge 2019) interrogates the question of what it mean to write history in the pre-modern Islamic world by drawing on the Late Antique historical tradition.

Astrid Benedek

Associate Director
amb49@columbia.edu

Astrid Benedek has been the Associate Director of the Middle East Institute since December 2003. Holder of an M.A. from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and a B.A. in Middle East and African Studies from Georgetown University, she previously spent 12 years in the not-for-profit sector managing international education programs, including teacher-training programs in the Former Soviet Union for the Open Society Institute.

Kathryn Spellman Poots

Academic Program Director
kp2692@columbia.edu

Kathryn Spellman Poots is a member of the Faculty at Columbia University and the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations (AKU-ISMC) in London. She is the Academic Program Director for the MA in Islamic Studies and the dual degree program in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures with AKU-ISMC. Kathryn convenes Columbia's MA core course: Foundation to Islamic Studies and Muslim Societies. Her research interests include Muslims in Europe and North America, the Iranian diaspora, transnational migration and gender studies.

Her publications include the monograph: Religion and Nation: Iranian Local and Transnational Networks in Britain (Berghahn, Oxford and New York, 2005); the co-edited volumes: Gender, Governance & Islam: Women, Islam and the State Revisited (Edinburgh University Press, 2018); The Political Aesthetics of Global Protest: The Arab Spring and Beyond (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) and Ethnographies of Islam: Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (Edinburgh University Press, 2014); and book chapters:  “Second-Generation Muslims and the Making of British Shi’ism” in Kasinitz, P. & Bozorgmehr, M. (eds.) Growing Up Muslim in Europe and North America, Routledge; and Spellman Poots, K. & Gholami, R. (2018) “Iranians in Great Britain: Integration, Cultural Production and Challenges of Identity” in Mobasher, M. (ed.) Iranians in Diaspora: Comparative Perspective on Iranian Immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe, University of Texas Press.

Kathryn consults for organizations that focus on the rights and experiences of refugees and minority groupings, including the UNHRC (Geneva), UNESCO (Paris) and London Detainee Support Group.